Adding More RAM

[IfYouHaveToAsk]

Hi i currently have 2 512mb Corsair Value Select DDR 400 cl3 sticks but have purchased 2 more 512mb Corsair Value Select DDR400 cl2.5 sticks to upgrade from 1GB to 2GB of RAM. I know 2 1GB sticks are preferable but this option was cheaper by far.

I also know that the winchester 3000+ does not have the improved memory controller found on more recent Athlon 939 processors (such as venice + san diego).

The system will boot fine with each pair individually, i.e. 2 of the old pair, 2 of the new pair so for now i can discount the fact that one of the sticks is faulty.

I think i need to manually adjust the bios settings for the ram because when i boot with all 4 sticks i get a blue screen after the post saying something about AHCP (will edit this if it is different) and that i need to update my bios.

I am researching the problem now but any help would be appreciated.

 

[IfYouHaveToAsk]

I swapped them around a bit and it seems to work now. Will post again if i run into further difficulties.

Apparently the winchester can handle 2x double sided and 2x single sided ram, which is what i now have.

[EDIT]

To Clear things up for others that might have a problem like this:

The Problem:

Windows would not boot with 4 sticks of 512mb RAM

Solution:

Rearranged RAM so the two new sticks were in slots 1+2 and the two old sticks were in slots 3+4

However, although windows booted fine, the ram was slowed to 100mhz as opposed to 200mhz and cas latency was 2.5.

I manually forced the ram to work at 200mhz and changed latency to 3 (i have been living with 1gb of cas3 and it has worked fine for 2 years).

Result - Winchester 3000 with 4x512mb of RAM running at DDR400 speeds.

Hope this helps someone in the future, it is very annoying when something doesn't work straight away, but with PCs i guess you just have to work the problem.

 

[CrazeD]

Setting the command rate to 2T can sometimes help too.

 

[Nitestick]

changing the command rate to 2T is actually the reccomended work around for this

 

[IfYouHaveToAsk]

it seemed to do that automatically.